


walking through the fire (hell)

by klixxy



Series: tea server zuko au [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, Not Canon Compliant, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Past Child Abuse, SO, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko Gets a Hug, Zuko Needs a Hug, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, give zuko a hug 2k20, haha ozai can go die in a ditch for all i care, here it is ig, idk where i'm going with this series lmao, just take it, skdjfna, sksksks, take it, well it's zuko, y'all kept asking for a sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:29:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klixxy/pseuds/klixxy
Summary: He’s been burned and he knows what it feels like to be burned and hurting and trying to ignore the age-old grief and misery that pokes at his heart with a thousand needles; itching, itching, always itching in the back of his mind- heknows.He knows pain.He can handle pain.This is not pain.(Or, Zuko, thirteen years old, waking up to a world that does not want him.)
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: tea server zuko au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801363
Comments: 16
Kudos: 511





	walking through the fire (hell)

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, yes, I have heard your cries... here is a sequel... I'll try (?) to continue writing a series for this au, but I might lose motivation halfway so don't go into this expecting me to actually finish anything lmao. 
> 
> Haha, I've had this in my drafts for almost a month now, and I've been writing like, paragraph by paragraph every few weeks whenever I managed to dig up a little bit of motivation. Today I finally got up out of my lazy spiral and managed to finish it, but the ending is a little meh. Tell me what y'all think about it in the comments please! :D
> 
> In this au Zuko is a bit more traumatized about everything because Ozai abused him severely (both physically and mentally) over the course of his childhood, and honestly? Realistically if a child had gone through what Zuko had, he would definitely be this traumatized. Nickelodeon didn't make Zuko's mental state this bad because they're a children's channel, but I have no such restrictions. >:)
> 
> Anyways, yeah! Hope you guys enjoy this. My posting schedule is wacky so I have no clue when I'll post again or if I'll post at all (my motivation is a fickle thing lol), but hopefully this will satiate your desire enough.

The world rolls around him, swirling him through shattered dreams and splashes of color so saturated that he feels that he may drown in the brightness; color, drained into muted blacks and greys that scratch away at him in such a way that all he can do is sink. His stomach broils and nausea distorts in his mind, turning his body into a writhing ball of sharp lines and harsh corners. His perception of the world is narrowed down to the darkness that roars around him; the shadows that swim up and down and around him- the sound that roars and blanks and screeches in his mind. 

The muted blob of color that speaks with a voice as soft as thunder and a gentle sorrow that aches and aches and _aches_ comes and goes and keeps a hand, steady and warm and _burning_ on Zuko’s shoulder, even as his soul pulls and his eye sinks into his mutilated skull as it roars and breaks and burns with the hurt that stains his being like ink. 

The touch is strong but weak, and a part of Zuko fears it; fears the pain that he knows will come from the fire that will blaze from careful hands- but the pressure of skin against his own does not break him, does not hurt him; only holds him tight and close as if it can protect him from the shadows and the darkness that whispers in his ears and the pain that wracks through the stars. The hand holds him and holds him and holds him tight, even as his body wanders through worlds and dreams that he will never know again; a strange puppet of acrimony, moving but lying still, screaming but silent, dead but alive- a type of existence where time trickles to something of no value, where space and gravity and the rules of this universe cease to exist.

His eyes are open but closed, his mouth gasping but shut tight into a grimace of- pain, hurt, an undeniable, aching wound that digs nails, sharp and barbed, deep into the intertwined maze of his own storming mind. The pain stabs at him and burns with a fire that never goes out- and Zuko has been burned before; he’s been burned countless times, like when he was five, and couldn’t make a flame, when he was six, and stumbled over his words at an important banquet, when he was seven, and couldn’t master the basic form; like when he was nine, and mourning a mother who was gone, gone, gone, like she’d never been there at all, mourning that empty place in his chest where he’d once allowed all the joy and love and good to dance and sing with a melody that is now long forgotten to his shriveled heart. 

He’s been burned and burned and burned- so many times that he couldn’t bear to count them- burned by the hands that perhaps had been supposed to nurture him, to touch him with not the harsh, stuttering touch of fire, but with the gentle warmth of glowing embers. He’s been burned and he knows what it feels like to be burned and hurting and trying to ignore the age-old grief and misery that pokes at his heart with a thousand needles; itching, itching, always itching in the back of his mind- he _knows._

He knows pain. 

He can handle pain.

This is not pain.

This is Vaatu, the god of chaos, shrieking and shrieking and laughing with a type of nightmare-like horror all around him; this is a hurricane, a storm, the rage of Raava herself as she brings nature to a heel and brings it forth to enact revenge on the world. This is never-ending darkness and the roar of La in an unforgiving storm that lashes pure fury into the sky and the foam-crested waters that churn and split and splash with such a wrath that it becomes something otherworldly- something that calls upon Death and Life and the scorching rays of Agni, something that shatters and takes and destroys- something that courses through Zuko’s veins in a waterfall of agony as he bears the pain of a thousand stars, bears the pain of Prometheus, left to be picked apart slowly by savage beaks and blunt claws for a deed that he had believed to be something worthy.

He wants to scream and writhe and claw at his face, because surely his face has been reduced to cinders, surely his face has become something that haunts children’s dreams and scares the souls of men who have been through hell and war and _is he even sure that his face still exists at all?_

He wants to cry and shriek and give in to Death, draped over his shoulders and breathing ice over his ear, and sometimes his eyes are open- or perhaps they are closed, perhaps they are broken and breaking and he is but a soul, lost and traveling a universe that is _far from kind_ \- sometimes he wakes up and his father stands over him, face dark with shadow and outlined with fire and coal and something that might just look _demonic_. His father taunts him and grips his fragile glass heart with fiery hands and tells him _you will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher_ , tells him _Azula was born lucky, you were lucky to be born,_ tells him that he is _worthless_ and _a failure of a son_ , and sometimes he reaches out and grips at his skin with roaring red and orange and yellow and Zuko can do nothing but scream and wail and beg for mercy from this man who he hates and loves and hates and loves and loves and _loves._

The pain shrieks, the fire roars, and his mind roars with it in a strange clashing symphony of sound- he sinks and screams and flies, all at the same time, he wails and cries and exists in what feels like a thousand different dimensions, a thousand different worlds made up of darkened nightmares and crashing moons- a world where Agni has abandoned him and the one thing he could have wanted most- the love of his father, love that has long-since become an unreachable dream- is something that he can no longer see, something that has become more of a singularity- that his father does not love him, that he is not worthy of loving, that his father will _never love him_ no matter what he does.

And perhaps that fact hurts the most, more than the screeching in his mind and the fire that only blazes stronger against the ripped and melting half of his face; he’d never wanted to acknowledge it, but perhaps he had always known. He’d known and known and known, every time that his father hit him and hurt him and burned him, and at one point he had realized that this was not normal, that _pain_ was not normal. He had realized it, but he had not wanted to truly know. 

He’s been running from these truths, from the face of his mother as she tells him _never forget who you are_ \- but who is he- which face, which mask of his is she telling him not to forget? 

Is she telling him to be that part of him that runs from the truth and lives in a world of lies and pain and failure, living and breathing only for the whims that please his father? Is she telling him to live as the him that smiled and played and laughed in that little pond with the turtleducks and the life he will never have again? Is she telling him to be the him that breaks and shatters and pretends that his soul is not ripped apart in ways that can never be repaired? Is she telling him to be the him that was burned and hurt, the him that is lying on his bed in this creaking boat, floating and crumbling to dust under the pressure of the hurt and the flames and the _fire_?

He lies there for what feels like seconds or perhaps decades or lifetimes or centuries; perhaps universes have collapsed and supernovas have exploded or the ends of time have reached their limit- either way, he lies there and lies there and _lies there_ , in his tiny little abyss where there are no rules and only a world full of sharp corners and bruising thoughts and a face of fire that will haunt him to the ends of the earth.

 _(Zuko does not know it- will never know it, but through it all, through the days and weeks and the almost month when he was unconscious on his room on the Wani, the ship doctor- the cheapest Ozai could find- wandering in and out and worrying because this burn was far worse than he had been trained to heal- through it all, Iroh had sat there, not leaving his side, even once, and held Zuko’s hand through everything._

_His hair had gotten greasy, but he had refused to move away from his nephew to shower, a young man in the crew by the name of Hoshi had brought him his food, but even that he had not moved his hand from Zuko’s to eat._

_Iroh had sat there the whole time while Zuko had cried out in his sleep and fought infection and endured a pain he never should have had to endure._

_He had sat there and he had vowed to never let this happen again.)_

When Zuko wakes, it’s to a howling emptiness writhing in his gut and two senses distorted and scarred. It’s to a pain that stabs and aches and itches in the dark corner of his mind that has been stitched over by shaking hands. The ceiling comes into focus, pain continues crashing in his mind, and someone grips his hand on his left.

Someone grips his hand on his left.

Someone he _can’t see._

The left side of his vision is black and darkened and he _can’t see_. His father stands over him and the Agni Kai chamber is as hot as the scorching fire nation summer as flames roar in the corners of his eyes, but the stone kissing the skin of his knees and his palms is freezing cold- a stone-cold, achingly familiar voice tells him _you will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher._

Hands. Hands on his face, a hand on his side- father is here, father is here, father is _here,_ and he should be _glad_ , he should be begging for forgiveness on his knees- 

_On his knees in the Agni Kai chamber, a hand caressing his face and he had been so **foolish** ; he had been so goddamn **foolish** because his father’s hand had caressed his face and he’d thought- he’d **leaned in** to the touch because he’d **thought** that-_

He has been a worthless, terrible son, but all he can feel is the fear that roars blank adrenaline in his mind and the panic that sends electricity through his veins. There is fire, in the red of his bedsheets, fire, in the tapestry on the walls, fire that he can already feel bursting from the hand that is still gripping his shoulder-

He is frozen and burning and some part of him is still in that Agni Kai chamber on his knees, screaming and wailing and clutching at the burning in his face, in his bones and begging for mercy- from who, he doesn’t know- there are needles in his eyes and a scorching pain engraving itself into his face, and fire hurts so, _so_ , much- he couldn’t have imagined that _anything_ could hurt this much- make it stop, make it stop, _make it stop, makeitstopmakeitstop **makeitstopmakeitstop-**_

He trembles and burns and some part of him is screeching in his mind, laughing and crying and praying to Agni for the sweet scent of Death, for the embrace of Chrysanthemums as they swish his soul away to the Spirit World for him to wander and crash and burn with an eternal flame flickering and sinking into the skin of his eye-

There is a hand on his shoulder, his stomach swirls with nausea, he is in a room he doesn’t know, and he _can’t see._

He tries to rip his arm away, but his limbs are weak and as heavy as the weight of a thousand burdens. His father is surely disappointed in his weakness, is surely disappointed at his slowness- He needs to get down on his knees and _beg_ , but his knees will not obey him-

His lungs heave and his hands shake and his stupid knees won’t move and Zuko can’t _breathe_.

Father will punish him, father will hate him, father will bring his hands to Zuko’s face and it will _burn_ \- but this time it will never stop burning, not until Zuko’s skin melts into his bones, not until Zuko’s eye chars to ash, not until Zuko loses himself to the raging flames engulfing him; Zuko is lost and burning and his eye throbs and he still _can’t see_ \- he can’t _breathe._

The scent of chamomile drifts over him.

“Zuko?!” The soft exclamation tears through his mind as the hand gripping his tightens gently. Hands of swaying jasmine caress his shoulders and rub away the pain-filled hallucinations gripping his mind.

“Zuko.” The voice repeats again, soft and warm as a ray of sunlight on a rainy day. “Zuko, nephew, breathe with me.” The voice rumbles quietly, filled with a tenderness that Zuko had only heard before from the soft lips of his mother as she sung lullabies to his drowsy ears that he will treasure for the rest of eternity. His mother speaks in his mind, her voice warm and soundless, reciting the scripts of his most favorite plays in the dark of the night, the candlelight flickering and waning between them, the script glowing gold. 

_The Blue Spirit, the scourge of the nation,_ his mother’s lips say, and he can almost hear it- her quiet, breathy voice with a slight lisp- just as the voice in front of him now, still nothing more than a mere shadow among his bandaged eye, murmurs: “In for three, out for four- good, Zuko, breathe with me now- in for three, out for four.”

He can’t hear through his left ear- everything is distorted and broken down to vague obscurity- but even through the panic that clouds his judgement, the vibrations of the voice and the flickering push and pull of the Inner Flame before him does not cause his fear to sour in his stomach. Despite the shaking in his fingers and the fear of his father’s flame _(traitor, traitor, traitorous thoughts, his mind wails)_ , Zuko is oddly soothed by the dancing pattern to the even Inner Flame that grows and shrinks with the breaths of the man holding his shoulders and grounding him to this earth. 

“Good, Zuko. Breathe.” The voice says again, and Zuko realizes with a sudden clarity that he can breathe again; his hands no longer shake with such vicious tenacity, his knees no longer feel as weak, and the raging downpour that steals away his rational thought calms to a steady drizzle. 

As he blinks his right eye, his vision clears away the blurriness, and a blob of gray, yellow, and red comes into focus. He can smell the scent of freshly brewed tea, now upturned in shatters of carefully painted china, soaking into the wood of the floor. The hands still holding him _(carefully, so very carefully, as if Zuko will break beneath his fingers)_ squeeze gently, worried.

“... Prince Zuko?” The voice asks tentatively, and it takes everything that Zuko has not to shatter to pieces like the teacup on the floor at the sound. Everything comes crashing back to him; the war room, the general, the Agni Kai, the cool concrete beneath his knees as his _father_ \- the feeling of fire on his face, the pain, the drifting nightmares that paint thick oil into the recesses of his mind. 

“... Uncle Iroh?” He manages to croak out between the clenching of his throat as his chest cradles the bloody ashes left of his childhood, his innocence, his heart. But then again, his childhood had never been the easiest, his innocence had never been quite so innocent _(fists of fire in his back, cold disappointment in his father’s gaze, his sister’s cruel eyes, a mother who wasn’t there almost like she’d never been there at all, punishments in the form of **pain-** )_, and his heart had never quite recovered after he had spent so long chasing after the ghost of his mother and her voice, reciting script lines in the dark of the night, gone with a whisper of wind. 

“Zuko.” His Uncle says again, as if that is the only thing he knows how to say. His voice chokes and distorts, and his Uncle’s eyes are nothing more than honey golden blobs- little bulbs of daisies in a never-ending field of fire- but they are filled to the brim with something that makes Zuko’s heart ache and his mind wonder if this is all a terrible, wonderful, crashing dream and his soul is wandering a wasteland of tragedy.

“Zuko.” His Uncle sighs out, voice shaky, his hands warm with something bright and yet sorrowful that flies and shimmers with the stars. 

Zuko is sitting in a bed on a ship in a room he doesn’t know, burned and hurt and banished by his father, eye blind and ear deaf, lost and filled with a yearning grief that only grows like mold in his chest, and yet his Uncle holds him tight, tethering him to this realm, tethering him to a life where Uncle’s eyes stare at him as if he is something wonderful and sorrowful, something to be cherished and… and _loved._

Zuko is half blind and deaf, sitting in a room he doesn’t know, carrying scars on his body he can’t count made from his own father’s hands, but Iroh grips his hands and stares at him with the same eyes his mother looked at him with all those years ago in a life he can no longer get back, and suddenly, the world goes blurry, and hot tears drip down his cheeks.

Zuko grips his Uncle’s hands as if they are the only things that are real, as if Uncle is the only real person in this cardboard world with a cut-out paper sun and clouds hung in the sky by strings- they are the only real people in this agonizing world of dreams and nightmares; in the end, everybody leaves him, everybody hurts him, everybody stares at him with eyes that are too cold and leaves him behind with a heart that loves too much and hurts too much and a deep emptiness that _aches_ in his chest, but Uncle is _here_ and gripping his hands and staring at him with what might be love in his eyes.

He has scars on his wrists from where his father gripped him so hard and burned little rings into his skin because he had failed to be a good son. He has scars at his ankles and the bottoms of his feet because his firebending instructors had whipped him when he had been deemed ‘not good enough’. He has scars all over his torso from when Azula had pushed him off the roof, when she had burned him, when she had tricked him into hurting himself. He has countless, aching scars all over his body from his father for every single time he failed to be what his father had wanted. He has an invisible scar over his chest from his mother that will never stop hurting no matter how much time passes.

He has a gigantic, branding scar across the upper quarter of his face- stealing his sight and his hearing. 

Sometimes he feels he has as many scars as there are stars in the sky. 

Invisible, raw scars that pulse with pain in his little burnt and shriveled heart of his. 

Pain and scars; two things that have become far too familiar to him, but his Uncle holds him as if he is fragile and beautiful and made of something that means the world to him, and Zuko can do nothing but cry, wail, sob into his shoulder. His tears hold his pain and his grief and his yearning. It holds his jealousy and his loneliness and his love. It holds all of the overflowing emotions that he keeps locked away in his chest for them to slowly suffocate him from the inside out. 

He sobs and cries, but it is more than that. It is the trembling in his bones and the midnight as he stares at the retreating back of his mother, flipping her hood over her face and staring back at him one last time with an unreadable expression painted across her face, blurry from his sleepy haze and the orange light outside the hallway. It is the weak butterfly wings fluttering in his lungs and the time Azula was four and looked up at him with a bright smile and something that may have been love in her eyes and called him _‘Zuzu’_ , the time Azula pushed him to the ground with cruelty in her hands and heart. It is Lu Ten, who used to play with him and laugh with him, Lu Ten, who is never coming back. It is his too big, too fragile heart and it is his father, who doesn’t love him, who never loved him, who will _never_ love him no matter what he does.

Zuko sobs into his Uncle embrace, and he is crying for his mother, who left him, his sister, who has become someone he no longer recognizes, for Lu Ten, who had never been meant for war, for his father, who doesn’t love him.

Zuko cries and his Uncle sniffs above him- they are two victims of life; hurt and hurting, broken and breaking, destroyed time and time again by their too big, too fragile hearts.

And yet, Zuko has always stood up again.

His eye is blind, his ear is deaf, and he has been banished, but Uncle holds him tight, and for now, he doesn’t have to pretend to be strong. Doesn’t have to pretend he is someone he is not.

Tomorrow, he will get up and ignore the way he flinches every time he spots a flame out of the corner of his eyes. Tomorrow he will get up and out of bed, and step out once again into this world of harsh reality, tomorrow he will open up a map and hatch plans and swallow the pain and the fear and the sorrow back down where it will churn and rage and howl in his chest. 

Tomorrow, he will pretend that the world is not crushing him flat. Tomorrow, he will put on a brave face and he will be a prince again; a banished prince. Tomorrow, he will start his search for the avatar. 

Tomorrow, he will start his path back home, wherever that may be.

Today, however, he grips his Uncle with trembling hands, and lets himself break.

**Author's Note:**

> I recently made a tumblr. I rant on there about AT:LA, Boku no Hero, figure skating, anime, and my own fics and writing things a lot, so go check it out of you want to.
> 
> https://klixxy.tumblr.com/


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